Self-taught builders Gantert and Bloom left no stone unturned — or, rather, no Dumpster unopened — to kit out their cottages, which make use secondhand materials such as local bakery flour sacks as kitchen wallpaper and terra cotta roof tiles as wall sconces, among other things. Even the siding is recycled: thousands of tomato sauce cans from a Portland pizzeria were transformed into sheets of leather-lookalike siding, with a little help from the weather and a few coats of linseed oil.

The cottages are fully furnished rentals, going for $1k/month, and feature storage lofts, reading nooks (that transform into guest beds) and loads of built-in storage. Living Small in style, and with respect for repurposing? I’ll take it.

January 20, 2009

This Living Small Lady like-likes Apartment Therapy. Case in point: A recent roundup of Small homes, delineated by the number of inhabitants (1, 2, and Family). From those flying solo in studios to those procreating in pint-sized spaces, this little grouping has all kinds of inspiration for those who live in little digs and those who are considering the big downsize.

January 14, 2009

Thank you for the comment you left on About Living Small. So thoughtful, and such great questions, that I thought I should share it. My answer is below; please, everyone, offer your answers, too. I may live in a li’l house, but I’ll be the first to admit that these questions are like itsy heads of cabbage. So many layers.

Q.

I’ve read about tiny houses, and living small, from time to time. I have a question/problem that’s hard for me to resolve… it’s a little bit of a chicken/egg thing. What kind of shift in thinking do you have to make in order to be able to live in a tiny house? What I mean is, I’d love to “simplify” to the point where we could do that, but I have:

I realize some stuff is just “stuff”, but some stuff is stuff you do use and could say “need”. Who has talked about really scaling back? I want to read about how people manage without the things that traditional large livers have and tiny livers don’t. And how they can transform their outlook to arrive at a comfortable system that doesn’t involve accumulation, but still answers the “needs” one feels are there? I know people out there must have answered this question; I just need someone to point me there. Final question — who has resources on tiny living with children?

AND A.

I hear you. Have you read about my closet? About my bookshelves? About the masses of paperwork, the craft circus that is my life? Likewise, we have a bike, electrical gizmos, books, cookware. Hard to live small when you’ve got transportation and communication devices, reading materials and eating necessities to contend with.

To cope, Mr. Living Small and I have had to adopt some new habits, certainly. Perhaps you could call it a shift in thinking, which stems from our growing concern over a cultural need to have, to get, to grab, to buy. We’re aware of dwindling resources and burgeoning populations. We’re nervous about how the planet can sustain this take-centric lifestyle. (It doesn’t hurt, too, that we’re suckers for secondhands. Garage sales, Goodwills, Grandpa’s house — all these beat the pants off a mall in our minds.) To scale back on our living space and take up less square footage — or, if you will, to reduce our “carbon footprint” by existing in a living space that doesn’t require much in the way of heat, electricity, etc., and which is located within walking distance of almost everything we need (the grocery store, the pharmacy, our jobs, arts palaces — you get the gist) — means we’re scaling back on our impact on the planet. For what that’s worth, I suppose.

In terms of filling the tiny house, well. My. We’ve had to shift our thinking on that front, too. From using the “one thing in, one thing out” model, to ever-evaluating the usefulness of our things, to leaving space in the closet for the perpetual donation bag, we’re always trying reach a balance between the space we have and the stuff we own (kind of like David Bruno, the 100 Things Challenge guy). Trust: I’m no Spartan. I like cush. I like tchotchkes. Figuring out how to maintain my junky collection of figural animals and vintage bottles and funky trays and, yes, books, has been a challenge. I’ve had to put the kibosh on regular jaunts to the thrift store. Inevitably, I will find something (and for just 49¢!). So, restriction. I’ve also had to part ways with the literary classics, from a 1950 illustrated edition of the Rubiyat to a 1980s-era paperback copy of The Great Gatsby. Breaking up is hard to do, but there’s always the public library, right? By the same token, we’re music people, too, but we don’t keep discs around; everything is stored on our computer and played through an iPod dock. (Though I’m toying with resurrecting the record album, space permitting.)

Smart storage is key. I disconnected a handmedown hi-fi from its moldering, smelled-like-burning parts to make room for my sewing paraphernalia, for example. Some other Small solutions:

Trad bike? Get a folding version. Easier to store, naturally.

Bananas for gadgets? Assess what you really need to communicate. Does everyone in the household need a cell phone and a Blackberry? Are multiple computers a given? Ditto what you require entertainment-wise. Is the Wii enough game? Do you super-duper need that Commodore 64, too? Do you watch enough TV to justify owning a set? Would a DVD projector be sufficient to watch the movies and television series you pick up at the library? How much music do you listen to? How many iPods does that equal?

Bookwormsville? LIBRARY! And a classy shelving system for the ones you can’t bear to give up, like Gail Brewer-Giorgio’s searing exposé, Is Elvis Alive? The way I see it, if you’re going to keep yer books, you should treat ’em like art. Display, display, display.

Too many pots, too little kitchen? Cutting back on kitchenware has come back with a vengeance for us. We’re cookin’-folk, and selling off half of our cookin’ supplies in the name of downsizing has cost us and the planet, too. I think it is important to evaluate how much you cook, and how and what you cook, and base your kitchen decisions on that. If you’re a strict weekend warrior, maybe you don’t need three crepe pans and a Dutch oven. If you cook big meals daily and host elaborate dinner parties, maybe it’s worth taking up some extra space somewhere else in the house. (Who says your tagine can’t hang out in the hall closet until it’s go time?)

To close, I like what Dee Williams, who lives in one of Jay Shafer’s famous-famous Tumbleweed Tiny Houses has to say on the subject: “Living in this [84-square-foot] house, I get a chance to feel like I’m saving energy, I’m definitely limiting my consumerism, and all of that gives me a sense of giving something back. And, you know, that’s pretty darn cool.”

Tim and Diana Hammer purchased their 550-square-foot Ballard cottage in 1999. Then a dilapidated shack in need of some serious TLC, the tiny space wasn’t quite what the pair had in mind as the perfect newlywed nest.

But instead of razing the existing structure, the Hammers opted to rework the former fisherman’s flophouse, creating an open, inviting space that’s anything but cramped. Moreover, they rebuilt an existing outbuilding, outfitting it with reused and donated materials to create a functional guesthouse and studio space, and Diana landscaped the property with low-maintenance native plants. Quaint, cute, and totally tiny, this place is the pinnacle of living Small with style; check out the rest of the photos, and you’ll see what I mean.

It’s a childhood dream, all grown up: a mod, beyond-cool treehouse. Now you can live amongst the leaves in one of Baumraum‘s prefabricated treehouses, which come equipped with bunks and trunks, light and heat, and even the tools to make meals. Though the houses come sans toilets and showers, and are therefore not quite move-in ready, they could make a great addition to, say, a piece of land hooked up to an outhouse. Who needs anything else?

Okay, so maybe one of these feats of arboreal architecture couldn’t serve as a primary residence. But they are nonetheless artful, and so Small, too. Win-win.